


Baby, It's Cold Outside

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Depression, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Hinted Relationships, Karkat Needs People, Loneliness, M/M, Sleep Deprivation, There Is Some Very Clandestine Cuddling Going on in Here, i dunno, it's fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 20:19:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2481128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's probably a happy story in all this, but no one can remember how to ask for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby, It's Cold Outside

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I am aware that I wrote something very similar in another drabble. Obviously I wasn't done. Hush ye.

John hasn’t met anywhere near of enough of his friends in person, but he knows every single one. Even with those years spent on separate spaceships (heh), Dave is still fundamentally Dave. Rose is still fundamentally Rose. Nothing will changed, because they never change. They don’t die, they don’t go away, and John can count until he runs out of fingers all the ways the Game has left holes in him, but his friends cannot be regretted. They are simply the best.

He kind of drives himself nuts missing them, but then the wait is over. It’s like coming home.

And everybody’s changed.

The only one who hasn’t changed is probably John. An apocalypse, three years, and the exploration of universes later—all to find out once again that he doesn’t fit in with everybody else.

Jade descends and things get really hectic, but the difference between this and being a thirteen year old kid in suburbia is that this time, John fights for what he wants. They’re his friends and he’s keeping them.

Karkat has changed too, but… How to put it? He’s changed to be MORE of what John identified Karkat as—a really good guy underneath the bluster. There’s a little less venomous ranting and a little more owning up to not being a total jerkbutt. John sees him fall face-first in the grass one minute and then bark orders at everyone (including Jade) on how to not kill each other. And he’s awkward and unexpected and weird and alien and John feels something slide into place that feels like being a little kid again.

It’s not that John has always thought Karkat was cute—that edges further into the homo territory than John is comfortable with—but he’s always had this vague notion like baby elephants at the zoo. Somewhere there is a race of beings that d’awws the Karkats of the universe. He’s cute like you want to smile at him so he’ll stop having a tantrum, and speak in riddles so he’ll get confused and maybe protect him from all harm just a little bit because maybe Karkat can take care of himself, but John doesn’t think he wants Karkat to have to. Karkat is already tough enough. They’re all tough enough, so can the hurting just stop?

Look, he’s not saying that specifically he, John Egbert, wants to shelter the collection of squishy bits that make up Karkat Vantas, de-shelled. But he would like for someone to do this thing. He thinks there may have been attempts. But Karkat probably shot them down because he is really, really good at being a jerk when someone else cares.

These are all thoughts John has had before he gets up in the middle of the night and finds Karkat sitting on the stairs.

John sits next to him with the glass of water he came for and Karkat looks over at him with those flesh-eating, potential horror movie monster candidate eyes. It’s late. John at least expects a yawn, but there isn’t one. Karkat just huddles on himself in a little more.

“Can’t sleep?” He asks and when John nods, he nods back. “Me too.”

When nothing follows but the hushed reassurance of quiet, this is already the least abrasive John has seen Karkat, ever. He decides that this rare moment of civility must not be wasted. “Mind company?” Karkat hugs his sweater sleeves and nods and John sits there on the stairs in a silence that starts to feel outright fond, staring at nothing and just listening to Karkat occasionally clear his throat or sigh.

John falls asleep on his shoulder. Karkat yells about it, but John just grins. If Karkat minded, John wouldn’t have slept in until ten.

Nobody sleeps too well these days and John can usually roll right back over after his eyes snap open. But for no reason at all, John ends up wandering a little more each night. More often than not, he finds Karkat. Karkat lurks on the sofa, leans tangled up with banisters, stretches out under tables. Karkat lets John know, gradually, between insults, that he’s not sleeping. His eyes look infected from being so bloodshot and swollen. The dark bags look like painful bruises. When John asks, Karkat says he needs a sopor substitute. John asks how to get him one. Karkat just rolls his eyes.

Terezi trades pillows with Dave at night, John overhears. He wonders about that. Dave just kind of blows John off when he asks and Terezi is probably telling lies about licking Dave’s skin cells off the pillowcase (John hopes, desperately). Rose and Kanaya sleep with their backs pressed together, like opposite sides of a coin. When John asks Kanaya if she ever has trouble sleeping, she tells him “not for a long while.” Sollux stays up more nights than anyone but Karkat, and mostly just ignores John. But when John tiptoes past the right door on his way to Karkat, he sees of Sollux’s horns under the covers, and a bony hand, fingers hooked over Aradia’s thumb. She’s curled up in an armchair next to the bed, wearing a book for a hat and a smile with her eyes closed.

John thinks he has a connection. When he comes down the stairs, Karkat is sitting on the coffee table. He lets John get close before he looks over, grabbing one of John’s hands and getting to his feet in the same motion. “Come on,” Karkat whispers. He’s soundless other than that, tugging John’s heavier footsteps out after him.

He wants to show John the stars. He starts to name them all, these constellations that John no longer knows, either because there are no streetlights to blind them in this new world of theirs, or because this universe is no longer his own. It takes John a while to realize Karkat is making it all up. When he makes up one of his own, Karkat doesn’t protest.

He makes up a story about this constellation and engineers it to be the happiest one he possibly can. Heroes who save everyone and parents who don’t die and loves that are fated and families who never leave. Worlds are saved and created. Karkat keeps interjecting tragedies—“but then the wife came down with a horrible toxic wasting disease” and “unfortunately the knight’s sword broke, shattered, and a hundred severed shards of steel exploded into his chest”—so John has to keep talking. The wife learns powerful healing magic and she fixes herself and then the knight. The hero wakes up in time. The stars come down and rescue everybody.

“You’re ruining this for me,” Karkat complains. It’s cold out, and the wind is blowing like John is the one doing it. Karkat sinks against his side. It gets much warmer after that. John cautiously fits an arm around him, testing the waters. It holds steady. His fingers don’t know where to go at first, but he makes it work. The wind starts up again in a soft sigh of warmth.

The stars are beautiful. John leans against the door, just looking at them. He has no idea what story he’s telling now. Karkat hums in agreement.

John wakes up first. Karkat has cuddled up to him entirely, head resting in the crook of John’s neck, hands bunched into John’s pajama shirt, fast little breaths huffing out as he sleeps. John decides to wrap his other arm around Karkat and tell him the end of the story of heroes and wonders. He blows more wind over Karkat's face and when Karkat wakes up, John calls him a lazybones. But if he really meant that, he wouldn’t have let Karkat sleep all day.

The huge, sleepy smile on his face is the cutest thing John has ever seen and better than stars, the world is actually made of butterflies.


End file.
